Mobile devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and smart phones, as well as a variety of other electronic devices, include acoustic processing functions that increasingly contain voice recognition capabilities. Through their ability to recognize incoming voice signals from users (or others), such mobile devices or other electronic devices are able to achieve high levels of interactivity with the users (or others) and to provide numerous valuable functions that depend upon voice input.
Although technologies for performing acoustic processing including voice recognition have been improving, accurate voice recognition remains a technical challenge. Although a variety of voice recognition technologies have been developed including, for example, acoustic matching and speech-to-text voice recognition, existing voice recognition technologies nevertheless each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Therefore, although any given mobile device or other electronic device will typically be designed to utilize a particular type of acoustic processing technology deemed to be suitable for the mobile device or other electronic device (or the particular applications on or performance goals for such mobile device or other electronic device) on which it is being implemented, nevertheless the implementation of the acoustic processing technology for voice recognition on the mobile device or other electronic device will be limited in certain respects.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention. In addition, the description and drawings do not necessarily require the order illustrated. It will be further appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.